Big Talk During War
by ll Kairi ll
Summary: A cute one-shot about Yugi talking to Atem about something important. Sorry, really bad at summaries.  NOT YOAI. In a way YugixTea and AtemxOC


**Disclaimer:I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh!**

Big Talk During War

I took a deep breath and pushed my thoughts to the back of my mind before I knocked on his bedroom door. A muffled 'come in' was heard so I twisted the door knob and opened the door.

My brother, Atem was sitting at his desk, hunched over doing work he had brought home from work. Papers littered all around him that showed he was busy working. He had been working nonstop since he had gotten home, almost two hours ago. He didn't even stop to take a bathroom break, as far as I know.

Leaning casually against his door frame, I tightened my grip on the deck of cards in my hand as I took another deep, calming breath. My nerves just didn't want to leave me; they wanted me to stutter and make a fool out of myself.

"Hey," I said, thankfully my nerves didn't show in my voice. One point for me, none for Mr. Nerves.

Without bothering to look up, Atem answered back in a stressed voice, "Hey."

I watched him read through a few papers before laying them back on his desk. I stayed where I was and asked, "So… busy with work, huh?" I mentally wanted to slap myself. That was such a stupid question; it was obvious he was busy; hence all of his work everywhere and a crease of concentration in his forehead.

Thankfully, he didn't notice and replied, "Yup." He scribbled some numbers down on a pad of paper where a lot of other numbers were. "You wouldn't believe how much pile Kaiba piles onto me." He worked as Kaiba's right-hand man at Kaiba Corp and did whatever the CEO gave to him. He was kind of like Kaiba's personal secretary, but did a little bit more. As of right now, he was working on the sales from all of the Kaiba Lands out there.

I nodded my head, "Maybe you should take a break." I suggested. "You've been working up here for the last couple of hours."

He shook his head and picked up a different stack of papers from the floor. He sorted through them and said, "If I take a break now, I'd end up getting behind and Kaiba would kill me. He expects the results by tomorrow morning and won't except them any other time." He quickly read some charts from the Kaiba Lands in the United States before comparing them to the other one here.

I tried not to feel to down about it, even though I had been dying to talk with him for the last few hours. I had something certain I needed to ask and I wanted to ask it today since tomorrow I'd be busy getting other things done.

I shrugged, trying to show that I was fine with it. "Oh, well that's cool. Maybe later." I looked down at the ground, hoping that by dinner time, I could talk with him then. "Well, when you _do _take a break, I have something important that I need to talk with you about."

I looked back up and straightened my posture, getting ready to leave the room when I heard my brother sigh. "What did you need to tell me?" I glanced over and noticed that his crimson eyes were trained on me.

With a shake of my head, I said, "Nah, don't worry about it; I'll just tell you later. We can't have you getting behind." I smiled to show what I said was true.

Atem raised an eyebrow, "If you don't tell me what is on your mind, I _will _get behind." He turned around in his chair until his whole body was facing me. He waited for a reply.

I bit my lip, knowing that what I needed to tell him was going to take a little longer than what he was probably thinking. And just coming out in the open, I wasn't prepared. I was hoping for something more that had my mind preoccupied. So, with another shake of my head, I said, "Really, it's probably best if you just keep working; what I have to say might take a while."

"Yugi…" Atem rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his tri-colored hair, similar to mine except he had blond lighting streaks go through his hair.

I knew that tone he used, he had used it many times in the past when he could tell I wanted to talk but wouldn't. I said nothing.

He stood up from his chair and stretched his stiff back. "How about I just take a break now, hm?"

I once again opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off, having been through this countless of times. "If I get behind on my work, I'll just make up some excuse. It's not like Kaiba could fire me." That caused us both to lightly chuckle. Firing Atem would be like firing Mokuba, Kaiba's little brother. Atem did his work so well, that there would be no one to ever take his place. Not like Kaiba tried or anything.

"Alright," I finally agreed, "But, we have to play a game."

"A game?" There was a spark of interest in the ancient pharaoh's eyes as he walked over to where I was standing.

"You." I smiled and lead him out of his room to my own, where we always played games or talked about stuff. Just something we grew used to.

Since I had cleaned my room moments before, we sat in the middle of my floor, facing one another.

"So, what kind of game are we playing?" Atem asked, noticing the deck of ordinary cards in my hand. He crossed his legs so get more comfortable.

I brought the cards into view and started to shuffle them, despite have already had shuffled them multiple times before. "War." I replied after the third shuffle. Shuffling the cards once more, I started to divide them evenly between us until there were no more cards. Atem took one pile as I took the other.

Atem's eyebrows shot up in interested surprise, "Must be some talk," he said but gave me a wink meaning he was all ears.

I playfully rolled my eyes and finished making my small deck nice and organized. Once I was finished, we started our game.

As we started to flip cards over, I thought about how I was going to tell him my news. I didn't want to take to flat out say it, but I didn't want to take too long to get to the point. I needed a topic that was nice and easy, leading up to the main thing.

After a few seconds of collecting my thoughts, I cleared my throat and asked, "So, how are you and Lyla doing?" Nice way to start off a conversation; nothing too boring and certainly not beating around the bush.

"We're doing good," Atem said with a smile. He and Lyla had been dating for the past three years, ever since we were all in high school. Now, we all had jobs or went to college. Atem had gone straight to having a full time, great paying job after high school while Lyla, after finishing up high school –she was a year younger- went straight to Veterinarian school to become an animal doctor. She went to school from eight am to five pm and only had an hour lunch of break while he worked from seven am to whenever he finished his work, which could be anywhere from six to ten or eleven pm. TO some, it would look like their relationship would have been either put on hold or been cut off, but, it never was. Somehow, they found time to be with one another, which was something I admired.

"We're going to be going to the movies this weekend," he continued as he laid a King down. "It's the only time we have to spend together this week since she'll be having finals all next week."

I tried to hide a smirk on my face. Payback wasn't always nice, but it sure was fun. "Just make sure you watch the movie; I'll want a full summary on the film." I played a card known as an eight and my brother collected his and my card.

"Yeah, yeah," he rolled his eyes and smiled. "So what about you and Tea? You two have a harder reach with you going to school in Egypt and she studying dance in New York. I do wonder how you two are still in a relationship." He paused and re-thought what he had just said. Realizing how horrible that must have sounded, he quickly tried to rephrase his statement, "I mean, with the long distance and everything, it must be hard."

I nodded my head in understanding and couldn't help but smile. It was hard trying to keep our relationship going since we were about five thousand miles apart from each other. Well, not right now we were. I was in Japan, on Christmas break and she was going to be coming soon. But, even when we were thousand miles apart, we still made it through. We e-mailed each other every day and we found the appropriate time for us to talk to one another on video chat. But, even with the internet helping us, it was rather hard.

"We're doing good," I commented and played a card. "She's going to be arriving in just a few days for her Christmas break and I'll be seeing her then." I smiled at the thought. Just a few more days, that's all I needed to wait.

Thinking about my girlfriend, the object in my pocket seemed to get heavier.

Atem smiled at the thought.

Not only was Tea going to be coming down for the holidays, but Tristan would be on leave and be coming down, and so would Ryou. Tristan had joined the military so we all rarely saw him and as for Ryou, he was also a student in Egypt. I had seen him a couple of times while I was there, but it would be nice to see him along with everyone else. The only ones who had stayed in Japan were Atem and Joey, who had gone to a community college to get his degree in mechanics.

"I can't wait until everyone is together," Atem said. "It' has been a while."

I nodded my head in agreement.

We played for another minutes as I thought to myself, '_Alright, __Yugi, __it__'__s __now __or __never. __You __need __to __show __him __now__…' _I took a deep breath and was about to reach into my pocket when I paused. Right when we both flipped our cards, they both were the same card; both were Six's.

We both smirked, always loving this part of the game.

"Remember the one time we went for three games in a row?" I asked, recalling a year or two ago we were playing this game. He kept getting the same final card so he had to go for another round.

Atem placed three cards faced down and I mimicked him. We both paused for a dramatic effect, just like how we always did since we were both serious gamers, and then we flipped at the exact moment as the other. He had a King while I had a …

"Oh yeah," I smiled in triumph at my Ace sitting on top of my cards. I gathered my ten cards and added it to my growing deck.

"Oh, just you wait," Atem said, "I'll get you next time."

After shuffling my cards and making them nice and neat, I took a deep breath and said, "Atem, there's something that I wanted to ask you and it's really important."

"Sure, aibou, what's up?" He looked up at me with curious eyes as we continued to play.

'_I __can __do __this__…' _I thought and once again, reached into my pocket. I retrieved the small object and pulled it out of my pocket and closed my hand around it, hiding it from view. When I opened my hand, a small velvet blue box sat in the middle of my hand. Gently, I opened the lip.

Sitting in the dark blue pillow was a small engagement ring. It was nothing too big but not exactly small. The band was a solid old and a small tiny diamond was at the top, shining from the light in the room.

I felt my cheeks get warm as I said, "You know how I've been working part time for that little café in Egypt?" Atem nodded his head and took the little box away to examine it up closely. "Well, I've been saving all of it up without spending one penny of it so I could buy this."

Atem smiled and said in a joking tone, "I know that you love me, aibou, but, I do have a girlfriend." He laughed out loud as I smacked his arm.

"Not funny," I grumbled but held a smile on my face. I took back the ring and glanced at it. "Do you think she'll say yes?"

"Do you think she'll say no?" I looked up and met my brothers crimson eyes. He noticed my hesitation and rolled his eyes. "She loves you, Yugi and to be honest, I think she's been waiting for you to ask her."

"Really?"

"Really." He took the ring back and examined it some more. "She's going to love this," he closed the small box and handed it back to me with care. "Even though you two barely see each other now, I think she's tired of guys asking her out over there. He needs a new excuse."

I slipped the ring back into my pocket, feeling better now that my brother knew. I just needed approval, a blessing, in some sort of way. That's why I told him about it. I mean, who better to ask than your brother?

"So, when are you going to propose to her?" Atem asked, picking up his deck that he had laid on the ground to hold the ring and continuing the game. He laid a card down which happened to be an Ace. He frowned, wondering why this card couldn't have been switched with the King.

I played my next card and almost sighed in relief. Unlike my brother, I was glad this card wasn't the one to replace my Ace. This card was a two.

"I was thinking of asking her when we're all together." I said, meaning when all of our friends were here. "I was going to pull her aside."

"Are you sure you can wait that long?" He asked, his voice full of amusement as he noticed my nerves and excitement.

I bobbed my head up and down.

Atem faked a sad sigh as he said, "Well, my little Yugi is all grown up. What happened to the young boy who could barely talk to a girl without blushing up a storm?"

I leaned over and slapped him on the arm again and whined," Be quiet!"

He ignored me and laughed, "Wait, it's all because of me! So really, I should be hearing a big fat 'Thank you.'" He gave me a wink.

"How 'bout I give you a big 'Thank you' tackle?" Forgetting about our game, I threw myself at my darker half and our wrestling war was on.

**The End**

I hoped you liked it! It was nothing special, just something that was roaming around in my head. Enjoy! ^^


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